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When Palm introduced the Treo 680 a couple of months ago, it made a big deal of releasing its first Palm OS smartphone for GSM carriers in some time in a variety of colors. According to Palm's Web site, the Treo 680 is already no longer available in one of its four launch colors.

So if you've been itching to get a new Treo in Copper (orange really), you're out of luck. Either Palm's multi-color gambit paid off (for one color at least) or the handheld-maker is limiting the number of hues because the strategy hasn't.

For those interested in buying the Treo 680, it is still available in Arctic (white), Crimson (red), and Graphite (silver).

Cingular, the only carrier to sell the Treo 680 in the U.S. so far, is offering it in Graphite only. The other colors are available in an unlocked edition that you can use with other GSM-operator networks, including T-Mobile.

Palm is selling the unlocked edition for $400, while Cingular's edition goes for a little less than $200 with a two-year contract and an unlimited Cingular PDA Connect data plan, which goes for $44.99 per month.

Update: Ironically, just as Palm stops shipping the orange Treo 680, the carrier Orange in Switzerland announced it would start offering the new smartphone. Not in orange, of course.

As with the Treo 750, which recently started shipping from Cingular, the Palm OS Treo 680 loses the Treo's signature external antenna, making it decidedly sleeker-looking than the Treo 650, which it replaces. Its GSM/GPRS/EDGE radio is a quad-band (850/900/1800/1900) type for global compatibility.

The Treo 680 also sports a VGA camera, a 320 x 320 pixel resolution touch screen, 64 MB of user-available memory, a 312 MHz Intel PXA270 processor, and Bluetooth. Its 1200 mAH lithium-ion battery is supposed to last up to 4 hours talk and 300 hours standby time.

The device measures 4.4 x 2.3 x 0.8 inches and 5.28 ounces and is the smallest Treo yet.

Palm has upgraded the user interface and introduced a new simplified five tab phone application with the Treo 680. In addition, the Address Book and contacts are now built directly into the phone application.

DataViz Documents To Go is bundled for Microsoft Office document viewing and editing, the VersaMail e-mail application has been upgraded, and Pocket Tunes (upgradeable for DRM protected content) will plays music files.

Google Maps delivers directions, local search, moveable/scalable maps, location satellite imagery and live traffic updates. And a threaded chat application tracks SMS conversations as if they were an instant messaging exchange, so you can view everything in one place. Palm has also updated the Web browser for faster performance and more accurate delivery of content, the company said.

The Treo 680 will come with a 30-day free trial of the Yahoo Music Unlimited To Go service and Yahoo! Music For Mobile.